Normal People

[Pages:202]SALLY ROONEY

Normal People

It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness.

George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Title Page Epigraph

Contents

January 2011 Three Weeks Later (February 2011) One Month Later (March 2011) Six Weeks Later (April 2011) Two Days Later (April 2011) Four Months Later (August 2011) Three Months Later (November 2011) Three Months Later (February 2012) Two Months Later (April 2012) Three Months Later (July 2012) Six Weeks Later (September 2012) Four Months Later (January 2013) Six Months Later (July 2013) Five Months Later (December 2013) Three Months Later (March 2014) Four Months Later (July 2014) Five Minutes Later (July 2014) Seven Months Later (February 2015)

Acknowledgements About the Author Also by the Author Copyright

January 2011

Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell. She's still wearing her school uniform, but she's taken off the sweater, so it's just the blouse and skirt, and she has no shoes on, only tights.

Oh, hey, he says.

Come on in.

She turns and walks down the hall. He follows her, closing the door behind him. Down a few steps in the kitchen, his mother Lorraine is peeling off a pair of rubber gloves. Marianne hops onto the countertop and picks up an open jar of chocolate spread, in which she has left a teaspoon.

Marianne was telling me you got your mock results today, Lorraine says.

We got English back, he says. They come back separately. Do you want to head on?

Lorraine folds the rubber gloves up neatly and replaces them below the sink. Then she starts unclipping her hair. To Connell this seems like something she could accomplish in the car.

And I hear you did very well, she says.

He was top of the class, says Marianne.

Right, Connell says. Marianne did pretty good too. Can we go?

Lorraine pauses in the untying of her apron.

I didn't realise we were in a rush, she says.

He puts his hands in his pockets and suppresses an irritable sigh, but suppresses it with an audible intake of breath, so that it still sounds like a sigh.

I just have to pop up and take a load out of the dryer, says Lorraine. And then we'll be off. Okay?

He says nothing, merely hanging his head while Lorraine leaves the room.

Do you want some of this? Marianne says.

She's holding out the jar of chocolate spread. He presses his hands down slightly further into his pockets, as if trying to store his entire body in his pockets all at once.

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